Despite the Gulf’s long production history, much remains to be learned about the geology here – and an ongoing industry-funded program conducted by the Institute for Geophysics at the Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin (UTIG), is proving to be a rich information resource for GOM players who want to add to…

Using ice-penetrating radar instruments flown on aircraft, a team of scientists from the U.S. and U.K. have uncovered a previously unknown sub-glacial basin nearly the size of New Jersey beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) near the Weddell Sea. The location, shape and texture of the mile-deep basin suggest that this region of the…

An international team of geoscientists has discovered an unusual geological formation that helps explain how an undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra in December 2004 spawned the deadliest tsunami in recorded history. “The results suggest we should be concerned about locations with large thicknesses of sediments in the trench, especially those which have built marginal…

Scientists from the U.S., U.K. and Australia have used ice-penetrating radar to create the first high- resolution topographic map of one of the last uncharted regions of Earth, the Aurora Subglacial Basin, an immense ice-buried lowland in East Antarctica larger than Texas. The map reveals some of the largest fjords or ice cut channels on…

The following geophysicists, engineers, and social scientists with expertise in earthquakes, some specifically regarding Japan and the Pacific Rim, are available to talk on today’s earthquake in Japan, the tsunami affecting the Pacific region, impacts of earlier earthquakes and tsunamis on Japan, and safety issues related to construction and nuclear engineering in Japan. Earthquakes &…

A year ago Wednesday, one of the five deadliest earthquakes in recorded history struck the island nation of Haiti. Paul Mann, a senior research scientist at the university’s Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) and expert on Caribbean tectonics, was there just weeks after the quake to study the geological causes and determine what, if any, risks remained…

When it comes to heavy-duty computer modeling, there are the Armed Forces, the space program, and then rock physics experts, such as Kyle Spikes. Spikes, an assistant professor at the Jackson School of Geosciences, studies rock physics — the exploration of the physical behavior and properties of rocks — using computer resources to analyze seismic…

Geologists studying the Jan. 12 Haiti earthquake say the risk of destructive tsunamis is higher than expected in places such as Kingston, Istanbul, and Los Angeles. Like Haiti’s capital, these cities all lie near the coast and near an active geologic feature called a strike-slip fault where two tectonic plates slide past each other like…